Browsing by Author "Willcox, Libba"

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    Art Nights: Reimagining Professional Development as a Ritual
    (National Art Education Association, 2023) Willcox, Libba; Herron School of Art and Design
    Art teachers’ need for connection, passion for artmaking, desire for mentoring, and quest for renewal led me to ask, what happens if we reimagine professional development as ritualized artistic practice? What would occur if our ritual was collaborative and intergenerational? How might ritualized professional development aid the quest for renewal? Pulling imagery and quotes from a larger qualitative and arts-based research study (Willcox, 2017), this visual essay shares what happened when an intergenerational group of art teachers met and engaged in artistic inquiry about their teaching practice. Specifically, it weaves together imagery and quotes to illustrate how our ritual, art nights, recognized and celebrated the everyday tasks of art teachers, connected isolated and alienated art teachers, replenished the emotionally exhausted, and privileged the practice of art making.
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    Rhetorical Questions and Ruminations: Examining Early Career Faculty Experiences through Found Poetry
    (University of Alberta Library, 2021-09-04) Willcox, Libba; McCormick, Kate; Herron School of Art and Design
    Transitioning from graduate student to early career faculty can often provoke uncertainty and questioning. This study explores the rhetorical and revealing nature of such questioning (i.e., Am I really this lost? Am I in the right place?). Utilizing methods from arts based research (Barone & Eisner, 2012), specifically poetic inquiry (Prendergast et al., 2009; Richardson, 1992), we created found poetry around rhetorical questions from our existing collaborative autoethnographic journal. We frame our findings with a selection of poems to provide insight into our lived experiences of transition. The question poems illustrate that our first year as assistant professors were preoccupied with managing tasks, balancing work, avoiding burnout, building relationships, and discovering how to belong in the new context. While rhetorical questions do not necessarily produce answers, questioning in a collaborative space allowed us to explore the struggle, complexity, and ambiguity of academic identity construction as early career faculty.
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    Untold Narratives and Reimagined Histories: The Work of Dawoud Bey and Titus Kaphar
    (University of Arizona Libraries, 2023) Nemeth , Jeanne; Willcox, Libba; Herron School of Art and Design
    This article provides high school art room activities that address the past, contemplate the present, and encourage teaching for change. The authors introduce two contemporary artists, Dawoud Bey and Titus Kaphar, whose work embraces the idea of untold narratives and juxtapose their artwork to instigate difficult but necessary conversations about America’s racial past and present. Bey’s photographic narratives and Kaphar’s innovative paintings unveil truths and histories of Black American culture that have long been neglected. Each juxtaposition is accompanied by background information, discussion questions, and ideas designed to engage students in critical dialogue about race and racism. These conversations are followed by creative writing, and artmaking processes encouraging students to learn from our histories to reimagine our present.